Fortune - August 14, 2008, 7:52 pm

By Yi-Wyn Yen

Former Viacom CEO Frank Biondi and former Nextel CEO John Chappel will join Carl Icahn as the newest additions to Yahoo’s board.

All eyes are on Icahn and his gang. The three amigos will need to start making changes to placate shareholders soon because if they don’t, it’s likely that nobody on the board will. The three were part of Icahn’s original proxy slate that ran under a campaign to sell Yahoo (YHOO) to Microsoft (MSFT). Icahn dropped the fight in July in exchange for three seats on the company’s board.

Shareholders are still waiting for Yahoo to come up with a plan that will drive up the stock. Since mid-June, when Yahoo announced that talks with Microsoft were over, the stock has dropped roughly 20% in value and has hovered in the low $20s. Microsoft had originally offered to buy Yahoo at $31-a-share. Earlier this month investors re-elected Yahoo’s eight incumbents. But investors signaled their unhappiness with CEO Jerry Yang and chairman Roy Bostock. Yang received 66.3% of the votes while Bostock received the least, with 60.4% votes.

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FORTUNE - August 12, 2008, 8:27 pm

By Michael V. Copeland

SAN FRANCISCO - Given all the drama surrounding Yahoo’s corporate activities, it’s easy to forget that there is a business still to be run and new products to launch. On Tuesday at Yahoo’s San Francisco-based skunk works - known as the Brickhouse - the embattled Internet company unveiled a new location services platform dubbed Fire Eagle. (Yes, it’s a silly name but say it 10 times fast and think of Firefox and it begins to sound OK.)

Location is one of those things that has huge potential for adding a layer of context to all kinds of services on the Web.  Geo-tagging - the practice of adding geographic information to Web sites, photos and videos - is gathering steam across all sorts of Internet-based properties, from restaurant review sites to social networks and house hunting services. What has been missing, however, is an easy way to insert yourself into that growing stream of geographic information.

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InformationWeek  - August 14, 2008 05:00 PM

A doctor in India filed suit to prevent the tech companies from showing search ads that promote pre-natal sex selection in violation of Indian law.

By Thomas Claburn

Google (NSDQ: GOOG), Microsoft (NSDQ: MSFT), and Yahoo (NSDQ: YHOO) have been showing search ads in India that promote pre-natal sex selection in violation of Indian law, a public interest lawsuit charges.Google India, Yahoo India, and Microsoft have been asked by India’s Supreme Court to respond to a complaint filed by Dr. Sabu Mathew George, whose petition claims that the three companies have failed to follow India’s Preconception and Prenatal Diagnostic Techniques Act (1994).

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Sillicon Alley Insider - Peter Kafka | August 11, 2008 4:37 PM

Kara Swisher, last seen immersed in the great Yahoo hanging chad scandal, is back with news that will be more pertinent to Yahoo employees and shareholders: The company, she says, is considering yet another round of cuts.

Kara surmises that cuts will be the outgrowth of two “navel-gazing strategy overview efforts” codenamed Aikido and Judo. But really, they’re a product of the fact that Yahoo is struggling with its top line, and is going to have take out costs in order to meet operating cash flow projections. Read the rest of this entry »

FORTUNE - Techland, August 5, 2008, 9:04 pm

By Yi-Wyn Yen

Yahoo (YHOO) on Tuesday disclosed that CEO Jerry Yang and other directors were re-elected last week to its board with far fewer votes than previously thought.

On Tuesday, Yahoo said it learned that Broadridge Financial Services, a proxy accounting firm that handles submitting votes for major shareholders, forgot to include millions of votes in its tally. Five of Yahoo’s nine incumbents received a much lower margin of approval after votes from Yahoo’s largest institutional shareholders, Capital World Investors and Capital Research Global Investors, were belatedly added.

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FORTUNE - August 1, 2008, 5:25 pm

By Yi-Wyn Yen

SAN JOSE, Calif. –Carl Icahn made the right choice not to fly out west to attend the Yahoo shareholder meeting Friday.

The billionaire activist who is the newest Yahoo director wasn’t the only one that didn’t show up to the  gathering. Judging by the number of shareholders who did attend, interest in the annual meeting was fairly low. But there were still some fireworks from shareholders who remain disgruntled over how Yahoo’s board handled buyout negotiations with Microsoft.

Eric Jackson, a dissident shareholder from Florida, kicked off the question-and-answer session  by criticizing Yahoo chairman Roy Bostock. “I think you’re overpaid for compensation,” Jackson said. “I think you overplayed your hand with Microsoft and you’ve overstayed your welcome.”  The audience clapped and cheered and then laughed when Yang replied, “Eric… It’s good to see you again.”

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Sillicon Alley Insider - Henry Blodget | August 2, 2008 4:18 PM

Given the rampant speculation that Jerry Yang should or will exit stage left as Yahoo’s CEO, Yahoo’s Board had to do one of two things:

1. Can him
2. Reiterate full confidence in him.

Yahoo’s chairman Roy Bostock appears to have just done the latter in an interview with the New York Times:

Roy Bostock… said the board has no plans to replace its C.E.O. “I have absolute confidence in Jerry and the management,” he said in an interview last week.

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